Verizon drops Motorola Droid Razr to $200, cuts 16GB microSD

Motorola’s Droid Razr, one of Verizon’s high-end 4G smartphones, now costs $100 less than it used to — but those savings come at a price. At the $300 price point, the Droid Razr came with 32GB of internal storage. Now, it’s down to just 16GB, thanks to the removal of an included 16GB microSD card. The $300 package is no longer available.

You might be saying to yourself, OK, but can’t I just pop my own microSD card into the slot? Yes, yes you can. And it will cost you far less than $100. A quick search shows that a 16GB SanDisk microSD card will only run you about $15 on Amazon. Or you could upgrade to a 32GB card (the maximum storage size allowed by the Razr) for a mere $25 to $30. In other words, those of you who bought the Droid Razr for $300 got ripped off.

Of course, Verizon didn’t just drop the price for nothing. It did so to make room for the upcoming Droid Razr Maxx, which will fill in the $300 price point. This time, however, the premium price just might be worth it. The primary difference between the Droid Razr and the Droid Razr Maxx is greatly improved battery life. Motorola claims that the gigantic 3300mAh battery will last you all day long, with 21.5 hours of talk time, 15 hours of video playback (from local storage), 6 hours of HD video streaming over Verizon’s 4G LTE network, and 10 hours of continuous GPS navigation.

These specs put most other smartphones to shame, especially the early breed of 4G LTE phones, which have notoriously terrible battery life. The sacrifice is a minor increase in thickness — about 1.9mm, which brings the Droid Razr Maxx’s heft to 9mm. This is noticeably thicker than the ultra-thin Droid Razr, which measures just 7.1mm at its thinnest, but still thinner than the 9.3mm-thick iPhone 4/4S.

Another downside to the Maxx is that it will ship without Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich), and instead runs on Android 2.3.5 (Gingerbread). There is currently no date set for the upgrade to ICS.

The Droid Razr Maxx is expected to hit Verizon in the next couple of weeks. In the mean time, potential customers can decide whether they want to save $100 for a thinner phone, with less-than-stellar battery life, or heave out the extra change for a phone that will last you all day.

*All prices listed here are contingent upon signing a new two-year contract with Verizon.